I am intially looking to implement the limited Wonders concept, and maybe an ICS solution

I know theres already people talking about a legion (very minor, but it sounds sensible to me too)

1. Muskets are miniature cannons. Cannons were the first weapon to project anything with the use of gunpowder. The posted tech tree still has that backwards.

2. The posted tech tree still appears to allow scientists to map the human genome without the need for computers.

Further to this I plan to change the Chaos Theory to String Theory... since Chaos Theory has little to do with GUT... if anything it's good for economic models... supply demand predator prey models.
Then there's Human Cloning... digital Encryption?
Hmmm... and I can't see the Republic...
And Ballistics without Geometry is cute.

*sigh* I'm not going to continue. Lets just say I think the tree could use some work.

On another note I use XL to fix a date (read turn) that I wish to discover the tech and the cost of it is calcuated based on its distance from the prereqs. Every since tech has its own cost. I imagine I'll do that once I determine a good curve for it to match.

I also cut all knowledge co-effs in half and generally quadrupled science outputs. Again spreadsheeting this stuff showed that CD's mod fixed the science problem but caused a gold problem. However from what I gather the science from gold improvements has been dealt with.

In my mod I currently have -1 hap on all wonders.
(meaning yes most of them are -ve... really cuts my wonder mania I'll tell ya... and well the AI does not do it anyway... thats why I did this).

And I imagine I'll implement my triggers too.
Bureaucracy Tax; Pop Migration; Refugees from captured cities; Terrorist strikes, but I'll have to test it out some before I do so.

quote: Originally posted by TheLimey on 11-13-2000 05:21 PM I'm awaiting my (Christmas present) copy eagerly... although the joy might be taken out of it by then. I am intially looking to implement the limited Wonders concept, and maybe an ICS solution I know theres already people talking about a legion (very minor, but it sounds sensible to me too) Anyone else have any other concepts they think they might try out?

a lot depends on Just how mutch slack you have in the program,For example, if you can add new Teck advances into the Tecktree, if their is a hard cap to the number of Units or City improvments you can add, if you can add more New-Diferent WOWs and FoW to the game, if their is a hardcap to the Numbers of govenments you can controll, Ect. (take my idea of having Diferent government classes, each of witch gets a New Govenment every Tecklevel, if CTP only suports the Govements listed, then your kind of stuck with the govenments you have, not with trying to play the game as a Govenment-class for the entire game, (my idea is to have Eco- athortarian- Democratic\republic- Thologan- and Merchantiel based governments for example, resulting in ~ 31 posible Governments (Anachy avalible to all, and each having a diferent starting govenment with individual bonuses and penalites culminating in the final Government type for each class)

quote: Originally posted by Gedrin on 11-13-2000 10:17 PM Well I for one started a very extensive mod all from my annoyance of two things. If the tech tree posted is accurate they still appear to be there.... Hmmm... and I can't see the Republic... *sigh* I'm not going to continue. Lets just say I think the tree could use some work. ...And I imagine I'll implement my triggers too. Bureaucracy Tax; Pop Migration; Refugees from captured cities; Terrorist strikes, but I'll have to test it out some before I do so. Gedrin

Give 'em hell, Chris.

Mark, does Jurisprudence give you the Republican form of gov't?

Chris, don't let me forget about putting your refugee trigger into the med mod when I change it over.

For those of you looking at making extensive modifications to the game, a bit of advice...

As for the Med mod instability. You know, I think you might have something about the number of techs. See PS below.

As for my mod. Well I've never made it available since I'm a perfectionist and way to lazy to fix up the GL . And then CTPII was looming so I figured 'whatever'.

I'll make it available for CTPII though. My spreadsheets analysis is so extensively cross-referanced out the wazzoo now that I expect it will take no time to dump all CTPII numbers in.

I'm also working on a Babylon 5 scenario. Got the tech tree made too. Anyone recall the B5 scenario for CivII? When I heard of the MOD function in SLIC my mind just raced with all the cool things that could be done.

Gedrin
(aka Chris)

P.S. technical feel free to ignore:
You recall me mentioning that you may not have one tech be the prereq for more than 4 others?

Not having seen the code and being of the understanding it is written in C++, I assume that there is an array to store the 'post-reqs' (new word? ) Anyway in true C++ "here's the rope now go hang yourself" style it likely does arbitrary pointer arithmetic to dereferance those elements and goes off the end of the array, crashing horribly.

The number of techs is also likely in an array and I'll bet is also dereferanced via pointer arithmetic... cause it's really FAST!!! However I would expect the number of techs to be available would be some fn 2^x
I'll bet that if you have only 128 techs that do NOT contain the flag NO_INDEX then your instabilities will end.

Oh and of some importance is my point. Betcha CTPII is similar in this regard.
Generally if a tech only 'leads to new advances' and has only 1 pre or post req then it should be absorbed into another tech. I opt for tree minimization as opposed to maximization.

However... seems you can build battleships... without the need for combustion engines. Ok mateys... ROW!!!

"aren't diesel engines considered to be internal combustion engines?"

Depends on how you use them. In the case of really large ships like battleships fuel oil was used to heat a boiler that produced steam to turn the turbines that turned the propellers. Smaller ships like destoyers and submarines would use standard diesel engines, just on a larger scale.

You are probably correct though about nuclear powered battleships. I don't ever remember hearing of a nuclear powered battleship, unless the Soviets made one.

The battleships that the US used until a few years ago though, were left over from WW II. They were just very heavily modified over the intervening years. I believe all of them used fuel oil to heat boilers to produce steam to turn turbines as described above. If anyone knows otherwise, feel free to correct me and put the record straight.

their were a few one-up designes of Batleships with internal combustion recipocating engin, but aparently for the most part the early ships were Considered experimental, becuase of actual and precived mantinnece problems(basicaly, its one thing to have to dismatle a destoyers engin, but to do simualr work on a BB would be a nightmare)

The primary reason that subs went nuclear is so they do not need to surface for air. I doubt a BB needs the power of nuclear power and so the cost is not justified. BB's are just not big enough I think... they are not afterall super carriers.

Well I'm off to see if CTPII is at the local games shop.

What I'd like to see in a CTP II mod is a 'fleshing out' of the time periods by addition of 4 or 5 technologies and units to each time period. Nothing crazy, just the addition of a few more options.

I felt originally that this may occur with the design of CTP II, but alas, the number of techs and units have not changed significantly.

I did some experimenting with the unit charts yesterday and could come up with slightly under 120 units that would be a minimum for a good representation of history (and I only used units for which there already exist sprites, either in CtPI (including mods) or CtPII).

The slaver is bad in his unlimited form, because he allows the ultimate population increase blag; far worse than ICS in my opinion, and in fact makes ICS *MUCH WORSE*. You pay once, you put the slaver in a half decent attack stack, and keep attacking barbarians and the unwitting AI and gaining, the only 'cost' being his upkeep.

Getting one free pop for a slaver in my eyes is fair, not including the city slaving, which I believe is fair and works already, since it can be countered, and he has a chance of failing and being captured.

You know you are right. I personally parked a Slaver in every city and led barbarians back with scouts... cost less support that way. I first thought having slave labour a seperate tech was superfluous but it does delay this tactic.

Wes: Note that (oh sorry, do you have it yet? Rub rub ) there is no index in the advances.txt structures. Could it be that advances are actually stored in a real linked list? Oh bliss... abstract data types Lovely concept, yipee!!!

Oh the upshot of that of course is infinite techs (within the physical constraints of available memory of course).

I am glad that the game seems to be receiving largely positive reviews so far.

I counted the advances and units listed in the Great Library, and noticed that they were not a multiple of 2. Any of you computer gurus want to comment on this?

Mark, have any of the Activisioners said whether or not they will be scanning the forums, especially this forum, in the coming weeks?

By the way, who else was on the A-Team?

quote: Originally posted by Diodorus Sicilus on 11-18-2000 12:36 AM If the slic2 is half as good as it's supposed to be (or even only as good as that in CtPI) I'll be able to modify the Tech, units, strength figures and government attributes to POSSIBLY get something resembling a semi-historical game, instead of the mish-mash of fantasy and froth I have now.

dont forget to re-balance the game after all the changes, ok?

Diodorus Sicilus, if you wanted to use the Med mod's advances chart as a starting point for your ideas, I would be happy to work with you on this.
I don't have the game yet, to be able to look at the entire tech chart at one time, but it's obvious that it needs a lot of work, as do many of the unit abilities.

I have a copy of the original game's tech chart, as made by Morgoth's wife, if someone wants to take it and convert it to ctp2's layout.

The members of the A-team:
Don Blevens (skorpion59)
Harlan Thompson (Harlan),
Katy Sodeau (?????),
Mark Cummings (Dutcheese),
Paul van den Belt (Paul)
Thomas Pelz (TP),
Tom Davies (Morgoth),
Tom Hempstock (Nordicus),
Wes Whitaker (WesW),
Wouter Snijders (Locutus),

Apolyton Admin:
Dan Quick (DanQ)
Markos Giannopoulos (MarkG)

I would not like to have to mod the game... there is no manual or help for mod games... I would be happy if Activision would release a PATCH or a "MOD PACK" with these and other major issues in the forum, do you think that if we ALL ask this they will do it? I mean, all I would like is an OFFICIAL MODIFICATION with all the details and juices. Please tell me if you agree.